We Are the Leaders of the Social Media Data-sharing Conspiracy

There seem to be non-diabolical explanations for what goes on with social media profiles and how Russian operatives might obtain them. Those operatives don't need oligarchs or billionaire high-tech CEOs to give them a key to the social media data kingdom.

In fact, we are semi-unwitting accomplices in the sharing of our personal information.

Anyone with a social media account has made a Faustian bargain. It's now been explained to all of us (many times over) how all social media monetize their assets (which are us). Facebook is a good example.

If you haven't read the Facebook terms of service lately, here they are in non-technical English: https://www.facebook.com/terms. Facebook is quite up front about how users' privacy works and what users' rights and responsibilities are. Many Facebook (and other social media) users have not properly secured their profile information. They have left the permissions for viewing their friends list, for example, to "public," i.e., anyone with a Facebook account can see that list.

Creating a Facebook profile means that what you read and write can be used to characterize you. That is what is valuable for monetization. That's what we "pay" in order to have "free" use of Facebook. We "let" others-- even Russian hackers-- access our information with our own privacy choices.

Customers (not us, but rather people who pay Facebook actual money for services) can pay for Facebook to provide clickbait postings on the walls of those who have certain characteristics (things like "people who look at Breitbart News but not The Washington Post"). One monetization strategy goes a little like this: Paying customers don't get the account owners' profile or even the name on the account. Facebook uses its internal matching and distribution services to decide who gets which news feed articles and wall postings. When a user suddenly starts seeing posts on their wall from OccupyDemocrats without "following" that group, it's most likely because they have "liked" other liberal-leaning posts or they've been writing with liberal language. They're a good match for what OccupyDemocrats is “selling.”

Do you know people who log in to a site using their Facebook login credentials rather than by creating an account with a unique, hard-to-guess password? They're raising their hand to have their Facebook profile information shared.

Here's another gotcha that Facebook users tend not to think through: http://wfla.com/2016/02/24/hackers-using-facebook-quizzes-to-get-personal-info-from-users/ Those who take sponsored "quizzes" on Facebook are deciding that not only their privacy but also your privacy are worth less than finding out which animated character they are most like based on the first name used for their account.

Facebook could do better, but it can't totally protect us from ourselves.